A color image is formed by three primary colors of yellow, magenta and cyan in a silver halide color photographic material according to a subtractive color process. Phenol-based couplers and naphthol-based couplers have been used for a long time as a cyan coupler. However, the dyes formed by these couplers have undesired side absorption or have unnecessary absorption since absorption spectrum thereof is broad, accordingly, the improvement has been desired from color reproduction. Further, they have such problems as the molecular extinction coefficient of the dyes obtained is small, therefore, large quantities of couplers and silver halide are necessary to obtain a desired color density, as a result, the film thickness of a photographic material becomes thick and the sharpness of the color image obtained is lowered.
In recent years, pyrazoloazoles disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,873,183, diphenylimidazoles disclosed in EP-A-249453 and pyrroloazoles disclosed in EP-A-491197 are proposed as a cyan coupler to provide dyes which have big molecular extinction coefficients, excellent absorption properties in a visible region and are improved in color reproducibility. However, any dyes derived from the above couplers have serious drawbacks such that they are inferior in light fastness and color images are discolored by exposure to light of a comparatively short period of time.